Among general medicine patients, early hospital readmissions were more likely to be preventable and amenable to hospital-based interventions, while late readmissions were less likely to be preventable and were more amenable to ambulatory and home-based interventions. This according to a prospective cohort study of 822 adults readmitted to a general medicine service. For each readmission, 2 site-specific physician adjudicators used a structured survey instrument to determine whether it was preventable and measured other characteristics. Researchers found:

Overall, 36.2% of early readmissions vs 23.0% of late readmissions were preventable.

Hospitals were identified as better locations for preventing early readmissions (47.2% vs 25.5%).

Outpatient clinics (15.2% vs 6.6%) and home (19.4% vs 24.0%) were better for preventing late readmissions.